ISC CEO: 'Independent schools offer greater capacity and specialism across the education landscape'

Ms Robinson said: "The typical independent school is a really small school with just a few hundred pupils, probably a primary phase day school. For those, there’s a lot of concern about how parents are coping with financial pressures, and the heads have felt under a lot of pressure over the last year or so. 

"They had a huge shock this time last year, when it suddenly came to light that VAT was going to start on 1 January. Heads had already set their budgets for the following year, so there was a lot for them to do during the summer last year, and for school bursars and finance managers to start dealing with all the detail. It was a very, very short lead-in for what was in fact a big tax change.

"And then for the parents, suddenly recognising that in January there was going to be an extra 20 per cent levied on their school fees. We know, looking back, that on average schools managed to reduce their fees by five per cent over Christmas, but even so, this has put extra financial pressure on parents. We know the typical parent is from a dual-income household, they're families who don't necessarily find it easy to afford the fees – so such a big jump in their outgoings has caused a lot of anxiety for a lot of people out there. 

"About 117,000 pupils in independent schools have special educational needs. Only a small proportion of those have EHCPs. Parents quite often look around at what schools are available locally and they find that the smaller class sizes or the particular culture of an independent school suits their children.

"We recently went to court over VAT on fees, and the court judgment included a commentary about special needs children. It said it was clear that there would be severe detriment to children with special needs who are displaced from independent schools into state schools where there isn't the full range of provision for them locally.

"I've spoken to parents who have said they are so, so grateful to a local independent school for being a smaller environment that got their child back on track. This is not to criticise the state sector; we know that state schools are underfunded, under lots of pressures of their own, and there is great teaching in state schools – but independent schools can offer something a little bit different, and parents can then find a way of keeping their child in the right environment.

"These little schools, and these parents who might not be on the highest of salaries – those are the very schools, the very families who are being hit the hardest by the government's triple whammy of tax. Schools are having to review their structure, and parents are looking at whether or not they can keep their child in that school.

"Independent education across the UK offers greater capacity and specialism across the education landscape. We're all on the same side here; we want it to be seen as one education system.

"Independent schools have done so much good, especially the larger schools, in terms of partnership work. In their local areas, independent schools provide partnership working, teacher training, bursary schemes – these are all things that heads and schools want to protect. We want to be part of the broader educational landscape.

"The government predicted that 3,000//children would leave independent education this academic year – they based the revenue that would come from this tax on that basis. We know that at least four times as many children have moved, and that means that it's unlikely this policy is going to yield funding for the state sector, at the same time as it's damaging part of education in the round. 

"Some schools are absolutely fine, but those are not the schools we're worried about. They are not the norm in terms of school funding. There are some schools who charge £75 per week, there are plenty of independent schools who charge less than the annual per pupil funding the local authority gives to a state school child. 

"I've spoken to several heads of schools who have had to wind up their operations, some of them in short time frame, and we're expecting more of this over the coming years. It's really tough for them because that school community is more than just a job; teaching is a vocation, and the teachers and the children have a really close working relationship.

"Their main focus is helping staff to find alternative employment, and helping families find alternative schools for their children. How easy that's going to be depends on the area in the country, depends on other local options, and depends, crucially, on whether there is space in the right locality for the right age groups."